Unfriended: In a lawsuit with potentially enormous impact, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states sued yesterday to break up Facebook, accusing the social network of becoming a monopoly by buying up or squashing competitors. 

  Federal and state regulators say in separate lawsuits that Facebook’s big buyouts, including Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, eliminated competition that threatened Facebook’s  dominance. With those purchases, Facebook owns the three most popular social media and messaging apps.

  Facebook was started 16 years ago in a Harvard dormitory and is now worth $800 billion. Breaking up Facebook would almost be like the breakups of Bell Telephone or Standard Oil. The big tech companies, among them Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple, are all in the crosshairs of regulators and politicians for their economic grip on e-commerce, electronics, social networking, as well as online search and advertising. 

  A hitch in the Facebook suit is that the government has approved its mergers and acquisitions. It’s rare for the feds to sue over their own decisions. Jennifer Newstead, Facebook’s general counsel, said in a statement that, “The government now wants a do-over, sending a chilling warning to American business that no sale is ever final.”

Viral News: The US yesterday posted its highest ever one day toll from the coronavirus; 3054 deaths. Previously, the worst day was May 7^th, when 2,769 patients died of Covid-19. 

  California reported its single worst day for new cases at 30,851.

  The Food and Drug Administration is now on the brink of approving the Pfizer two-shot vaccine for emergency use. Canada announced that it has approved the vaccine already.

Trumpus Rex: First he lost, now he’s losing it. Donald Trump is going down with Twitter thumbs blazing. He tweeted yesterday that, “At 10:00 P.M. on Election Evening, we were at 97% win with the so-called ‘bookies’,” as if betting odds were ever a  reason to overturn a presidential election.

  Displaying his ignorance of history and law, Trump tweeted, “No candidate has ever won both Florida and Ohio and lost. I won them both, by a lot!”  Yes, actually, it’s happened. Richard Nixon won Florida and Ohio in 1960 and lost to John Kennedy.

  All 50 states have certified their election results, even Texas, which is suing to overturn the vote in four other states. Running out of legal arguments, Trump said he’s throwing in with Texas, which is suing those states for changing their balloting laws. “It is very strong, ALL CRITERIA MET,” he tweeted about the lawsuit. “How can you have a presidency when a vast majority think the election was RIGGED?” he asked.

  The vast majority does not think it was rigged, but the attorneys general of 17 states have filed briefs in support of the Texas lawsuit, which seeks to invalidate the votes of millions of Americans.

   In their brief before the Supreme Court, Trump’s own lawyers dodge the issue of provable fraud in the election, arguing that state loosened ballot rules “so that fraud becomes undetectable.” So now they are claiming there was massive fraud but you can’t see it.

Taxing Issue: Feeding the Republican frenzy, President-elect Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, announced that he’s under investigation for potential tax fraud. The investigation had been kept under wraps during the election season under a Justice Department policy to avoid influencing an election.

  Hunter Biden said in a statement, I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors,” Hunter Biden said in a statement.

  Hunter is the troubled child whose business and personal life have been an embarrassment to his father.

  The conservative press jumped all over this one. Fox’s Tucker Carlson was immediately claiming that failure to announce the investigation is proof the election was rigged, even though it was President Trump’s administration that kept the secret.

Death Be Not Proud: The Trump administration is racing to execute federal prisoners in the last days before the anti-death Joe Biden takes over. Breaking the custom of pausing executions during the presidential transition period, five executions are scheduled before the January 20^th inauguration of Joe Biden. 

  If all five are carried out, Trump will have presided over 13 federal executions, the most in over a century. 

The Bulletin Board: Earlier this week the upstart conservative cable channel Newsmax TV beat Fox News during prime time for the first time. President Trump has abandoned for Newsmax and the  equally rabid One America News Network. — Mellissa Carone, the wacko woman who testified about election fraud last week before the Michigan legislature next to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani says she wasn’t drunk that day and also that former President Barack Obama and his wife “funded that Wuhan lab to make Covid.”  

Nuggets: Lifetime Television is about to premiere its new movie, “A Recipe for Seduction,” with Mario Lopez starring as the younger Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  Political analyst Jeff Greenfield tweeted, “Hope FCC will be carefully monitoring gratuitous exposure of breasts and thighs.”

-30-